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Wednesday, December 25, 2013

We hope you're having a great Christmas! Today, we have two items for your entertainment and edification.First, one of the best Christmas light shows I've ever seen. It is set to a version of "It's Called Christmas with a Capital C" by Go Fish, with commentary by comedian Brad Stine. Someone added a few sound effects. It's a foot-stomping great tune:

Next, there is something to read. Although it was inspired by Christmas, the main part of the article applies all the time. The first section gives links debunking the nonsense being spread that Christmas has pagan origins and symbols, and can be useful for reference when that stuff comes up again. Second, it's about Christians doing good deeds. We don't have to be forced by Obama's thugs who tax us into poverty so they can give the money to their political cronies or find other ways to make themselves look good. Followers of Jesus are, generally speaking, a giving people. We want to please God and be a blessing to mankind. What causes that?

In my own experience, we have an Axis of Christmas Evil: Atheists, cultists and sanctimonious Christians ridicule those of us who have the freedom to celebrate Christmas by using bad history and worse biblical exegesis. No, it is not based on the pagan holiday of Saturnalia. No, it is not loaded with pagan origins. No, Jeremiah 10.2-4 does not forbid Christmas trees (especially since the use of Christmas trees did not appear in history until about the 1500s). Yes, some pagan elements have crept in. Yes, secularism has helped take away the true meaning of Christmas, and Christians need to keep a proper perspective. There is a great deal of accurate historical research about these topics, so I do not need to discuss them any longer.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

The existence of blood cells and soft tissues in Tyrannosaurus rex and other fossils created quite a stir in the evolutionary camp. After all, by their way of reckoning, there is no way that blood and tissues can be preserved for sixty-five million years. (Biblical creationists did not have a problem with the discovery.) Some uninformed but enthusiastic cheerleaders for evolution tried to deny it, but the facts remain.

Now the discoverer of the first Tyrannosaurus rex tissues has released the results of some research. It appears that iron in blood has a key part in preservation. Unfortunately, the experiments were spurious because of human interference and implausible situations (such as the Miller-Urey experiment, where the trap was removed to keep amino acids that would be destroyed in the synthetic environment). The extrapolation from two years to multiple millions of years is also absurd. The "research" has some valid points, but overall, is worthy of the Nebraska Man and Piltdown Man fiascoes.

Researchers are now suggesting that iron embedded in blood proteins preserved the still-soft tissues, cells, and molecules discovered inside dinosaurs and other fossils after the creatures were buried in sediments. The ability to justify millions of years is at stake, and this study promises to do just that. What are its merits and demerits?

Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Mary Schweitzer led a team that showed how iron atoms from blood adhere to and preserve blood vessels. The team placed ostrich bone blood vessels in water and watched them disintegrate in less than a week. They then treated another set of ostrich blood vessels with concentrated blood, and the treated blood vessels still looked fresh after two years of sitting on the lab bench.

They postulated that iron generates chemically reactive oxy radicals that help adjacent proteins bond, preserving their overall structure in a process called cross-linking. The way a fried egg resists rotting longer than a raw, cracked egg might illustrate this effect.

“Oxy radicals also facilitate protein cross-linking in a manner analogous to the actions of tissue fixatives (e.g. formaldehyde), thus increasing resistance of these ‘fixed’ biomolecules to enzymatic or microbial digestion,” according to Schweitzer and her colleagues.

These results are unique and compelling. But do they really justify the study authors’ claim that this iron preservation phenomenon explains how dinosaur tissues lasted for tens of millions of years?

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

A while back, I asked Matt Slick of CARM if he agreed with my speculation that unbelievers tended to be politically on the left. He replied with a strong affirmative. There are a few atheists that are Conservatives, but they are few (S.E. Cupp is a Conservative, and has been maligned for not being vicious. Guess that's a part of the "No True Atheist" fallacy.) Many believe in "science" as the savior of the world. This is the religion of Scientism, and science itself has failings.Political and religious leftists have many behavior patterns in common. Some of these include equivocating "evolution" and "global warming" with "science", attacking people who dare to show facts that dispute their views, using loaded terminology to demonize people they do not like, emotional manipulation, legislative manipulation, bullying in general and more. They also support their own kind, no matter how wicked or wrong they are. It's about the ideology, not about the true spirit of scientific inquiry nor about how to best serve their country.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ list of champions only includes those who take far-left political stances on the issues.

Live Science republished a list from the Union of Concerned Scientists by Seth Shulman, one of their senior staff writers. Under the title, “Got Science? Champions Who Stood Up for Science in 2013,” the list is noteworthy for its extreme leftist bias. Even though his list of six champions promises to include those “from every political persuasion,” the two arguably conservative entrants were nevertheless praised for standing against other conservatives on political issues. The list appears to equate “science” with left-leaning political positions on each issue, such as:

We are asking you to imagine if a new English version of the Bible were to be released which would satisfy those who don’t accept Genesis at a straightforward reading. In the right-hand column of the following table we have tried to envisage how many of the well-known proponents of long-age and theistic evolutionary views might respond. I.e. the ‘expert’ sayings below are fictional, but actually not that far from what they really teach, as the links to their actual past quotes show.

Therefore, although this is satire, there is a serious teaching purpose of this article, as our conclusion will make clear. Note, too, that our heartfelt desire is that the individuals and Bible College institutions named here might view the following as a loving ‘wake-up call’ to re-think seriously their compromise position re Genesis. It is certainly not our desire that this very public article ‘lock’ these individuals and Bible colleges into these views. Rather, we do this in hope that they might realize that their compromise views are actuallydestroying their own foundation.

So, let’s begin:

Stop Press—A new Bible version released to critical acclaim!

At last: a Bible you can read without being led astray by teaching of young-earth creationism. The New Compromise Version! This Bible combines readability with the best scholarship of modern uniformitarian geology and evolutionary biology. Now you don’t have to cross out all the parts of the Bible contradicted by modern science:

Sample passages

And there was evening, and there was morning—the first eon.—Genesis 1:5

And God said, “Let lights in the vault of the sky appear to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let lights appear in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God caused the two great lights to appear as the cloud cover slowly dissipated—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He had also made the stars back in the First Eon long before the Earth. God allowed them to appear in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth eon.—Genesis 1:14–19

Then after as many years as the number of grains of sand, God said, “Let us make man in our image.” So God took one of the animals that had arisen over these ages, which looked like a man but was not, and God breathed His spirit into this creature so that it was changed into a man. In like manner God took a female hominid and made a companion for Adam. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” And it was so. And from this first pair, and from so many others like them, came all the people of the earth.—Genesis 1:26–28

But in those days there were terrors on the land and in the sky and in the seas, and many also fell prey to a host of terrible plagues. God gave humans and animals to each other for food. Some plants and animals killed with poisonousstings and bites, and from time to time many of the creatures that God had made died and were buried and were no more. But new ones arose to take their place. Animals and humans suffered from gout, osteoporosis, and bone cancer, and God called this “very good”.—Genesis 1:29–31

Then the Lord God took a few thousand hominids formed from ape-like ancestors through evolution and breathed in them, and they became spiritual beings.—Genesis 2:7

The waters rose and increased greatly on the land, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the land of Mesopotamia, and all the mountains under the sky were covered. Every living thing in that land that moved perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything in the area that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the country was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the area. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark, were safe—as well as all those living in the rest of the world unaffected by this flood.—Genesis 7:18–23

The fear of man is most important for today’s Christians to maintain academic respectability, but he who trusts in the Lord is naïve.—Proverbs 29:25

If I [Jesus] have told you earthly things like the fact that Adam and Eve existed ‘from the beginning of creation’ and the global Flood really ‘occurred’, and I’m wrong, don’t worry; just believe me anyway if I tell you heavenly things.—John 3:12

But if you do not believe his [Moses’] writings, it’s not a problem, because you can believe my [Jesus’] words anyway.—John 5:47

Now these [Berean] Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the word and the scriptures daily to test them against uniformitarian science and reinterpreting them accordingly.—Acts 17:11

For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been invisible in nature, which looks like the results of survival of the fittest, so unbelievers have a good excuse.—Romans 1:20

For the creation was always afflicted with futility because of him who created it that way, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that for millions of years, even billions, the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth until now.—Romans 8:20–22

Be conformed to this world and be transformed by the renewal of your mind towards secular academic thinking.—Romans 12:2

We affirm arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and make Christian teachings captive to every scientific thought.—2 Corinthians 10:5

Imbibe modern philosophy, and make sure you follow the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and accordingly judge the teachings of Christ.—Colossians 2:8

You must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. And by these waters also one locality of that time was deluged and destroyed, but these scoffers understandably forget that because this local flood left no trace.—2 Peter 3:3–7

What experts are saying

Finally, a translation that submits to the reality of evolution! Never mind what Godsaid; this is what he really meant!—Kenneth Miller

Previous Bible versions show Jesus making embarrassing mistakes such as affirming Noah’s Flood as history (Luke 17:26–27). But now I don’t have to skip these passages when preaching to evangelical students.—Rev. Dr Keith Mascord

We often had creationist plants in our lectures on science and Christianity. No matter what version of the Bible they used, they would embarrass the lecturer by claiming that evolutionary truths he was teaching contradicted the Bible. Now with the New Compromised Version as standard for this course, our lecturers have a far easier time in teaching why Christians should believe evolution.—Rev. Dr Graham Buxton

This should be especially helpful to Christian university students troubled by the blatant contradictions between most versions and evolution. This Bible translation shows for the first time thatGod used evolution.—Tertiary Students’ Christian Fellowship

If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote Scripture without error. Praise God for this version which makes this clearer.—Kenton Sparks, BioLogos

Without this version, old-earth creationism would have no foundation. Praise the Lord for the New Compromised Version!—Fuz Rana, Reasons to Believe

For Paul, Adam certainly seems to be the first person created from dust, and Eve was formed from him. But modern scientific and archaeological evidence shows that he was wrong. Thus the New Compromised Version rightly relegatesRomans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21–22,45 to marginal notes.—Peter Enns

The first Bible to show that the Fall worked backwards to cause millions of years of death and bloodshed. Kudos to the great translators of this version for finding this solution that had eluded all the Church Fathers, Reformers, and previous translators.—William Dembski

“At last, a Bible where I don’t have to reject a literalistic reading of Genesis 1. This New Compromise Version will certainly help people who are prone to literalistic reading.”—Rev. Dr. John Dickson, co-founder and director of the Centre for Public Christianity, Australia

A Bible that’s safe for homeschooling parents, so that their children won’t stray into young earth creationism.—Peter Enns

As I’ve said before, “Of necessity, this evolutionary effort will also mean that some of the teachings [of Christianity/the Bible] will be translated almost beyond recognition, just as our skin is so unlike that of our scaly reptilian ancestors. Then, too, some passages will have so little utility that they will disappear, just as the primate tail was lost within our lineage of apes.” I’m delighted that the great scholars behind the New Compromised Version have taken my advice.—Rev. Michael Dowd, author ofThank God for Evolution

Conclusion

As we stated in our introduction, the above is theological satire. It does have a serious side though: it shows what the Bible would need to teach if the compromisers were right.

So even though the ‘expert’ sayings above are fictional, they are right in line with their past sayings, as the hyperlinks demonstrate (for those readers who clicked on them). We also note that there are differences between the old-earth creationists, such as those in Reasons to Believe, who tend to affirm biblical inerrancy, and theistic evolutionists who often openly deny it. However, as the above satirical piece shows, both long-agers and theistic evolutionists have views that are “divided against themselves”, and as such, cannot stand. They are actually destroying their own foundation—the Word of God—leaving their views both baseless and unsustainable.

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Well, there is the possibility of a loving god who created all things or there is the idea that nothing exploded into something and after lots of random bonking around that nothing made pigs and chimps who mated and made...you! As I recover (to an extent) from the government's idiotic meddling in medicine, I will begin again to pull out the rug from under Materialists. Did you ever consider the fact that nothing cannot exist without being created first? Dwell on that one sometime.

For now, just imagine how inane this idea below really is and see if you can count the unproved suppositions found in the original arguments in the full source document, which I link for you at the end. If you had a supposition drinking game with a friend, you'd both probably pass out drunk and therefore (thankfully) not try to drive...

Related:

One of the world’s leading authorities on genetics says the human race was born into existence after a chimpanzee mated with a pig.

Dr. Eugene McCarthy’s stunning claims were made inan online article, although it was not clear when the startling findings was initially published.

According to the University of Georgia alumnus, while human beings share a number of characteristics with chimpanzees, there are others that don’t correspond with the primates.

“What is this other animal that has all these traits? The answer is Sus scrofa – the ordinary pig,” he wrote.

A leading scientist suggests human beings emerged after a primate mated with a pig. (Image source: Shutterstock)

“The tentative scenario that I picture is that human beings came into being via hybridization between a pig, whose best modern representative is Sus scrofa, and an ape, best represented today by the pygmy chimpanzee, Pan paniscus,” he added.

McCarthy’s claims even initially stunned him.

“I must admit that I initially felt a certain amount of repugnance at the idea of being a hybrid,” he stated. “The image of a pig mating with an ape is not a pretty one, nor is that of a horde of monstrous half-humans breeding in a hybrid swarm.”

“The image of a pig mating with an ape is not a pretty one…”

“But the way we came to be is not so important as the fact that we now exist,” he concluded. “As every Machiavellian knows, good things can emerge from ugly processes, and I think the human race is a very good thing.”

This post has been updated to reflect that, while McCarthy is an alumnus of the University of Georgia, the scientist is not a faculty member at the school.

If you care to inflict a few pages of nonsense upon your brain, go ahead and read the entire article written by McCarthy here.

The entire thing is incredibly suppositional. But of course Darwinists must live entirely upon supposition, as the evidence we find in the world today rips their precious worldview to shreds, which is why they keep making up silly stories to fool the low-information people most of our government schools crank out. I find it interesting that, just for a moment, McCarthy had some doubts and even expressed them on page two:

"For my own part, curiosity has carried me away from my old idea of
reality. I no longer know what to believe. Is it possible that so many
biologists might be wrong about the nature of human origins?"

But then he must have realized that the road of logic would destroy his worldview and he quickly shook off that thought-direction. Few Darwinists allow the lack of evidence involved in their worldview to stop them from rambling down the yellow brick road. One must believe in the great and powerful OZ (Darwinism) no matter what evidence is found!!!

Friday, December 06, 2013

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!!! So this is now a team blog with THE Piltdown Superman blogging with me, even as he keeps making great posts at his own blog like this one. Yes, I will get back to worldviews and science before long. Yes, the new intrusive Federal regulations perpetrated without Congressional oversight or the opinion of doctors has made me sick. Yes, I am going to keep fighting anyway. Now back to our movie...Today I would like to introduce the Matt Walsh blog with this post, below.

There are real victims in this world. There are people who have really suffered. There are people who have been preyed upon. There are people who have been hurt. Really hurt. There are people who have been raped, abused, molested, oppressed.

There are victims in this world, and I’m sure they’d agree with me when I say this: you shouldn’t want to be one of them. In America, we’ve turned Victimhood into a billion dollar business. We are apparently so bored and so comfortable that we gaze enviously at the “lucky” souls who have endured the slings and arrows of actual persecution.

Maybe it’s part of our obsession with being noticed. We find admiration too difficult to earn, so we settle for admiration’s whiny cousin: pity. Our grandparent’s generation never wanted pity, even when their situation warranted it. We, on the other hand, find it to be more profitable and less demanding to be pitiful than it is to be successful.

She wrote a viral blog post a few weeks ago called “Why I Make Terrible Decision.” It was, essentially, one long, eloquent, (deceitful), gut-wrenching laundry list of gripes about her lot in life. She’s “poor,” she insisted, and she’ll never not be poor. Her life is so hard. Everyone feel sorry for her. She has it worse than everyone else on the planet. Oh, you live in a mud hut in Guatemala and your wife just died of dysentery two days ago? Sorry, you’ve never suffered like Linda the Poor Huffington Post Blogger. She, like, has bills. BILLS. And she doesn’t like paying them. This is the stuff of Greek Tragedy, particularly because it was mostly mythological.

The internet rallied to donate her money. Her story was spread all over the web as “proof” that America is unfair to poor people. And then, predictably, it was revealed that Linda, uh, “exaggerated.” Turns out she lives in a nice house (paid for by her parental benefactors), she has a private school education, speaks three languages, she’s a Democratic activist, she worked in politics, and she bills herself as a political consultant.

But, you know, her life is still super hard and she’s a victim of the System. She also consults and works for the System, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t victimized by it.

Do you think your Facebook friends who posted her original essay will bother to post the truth about it?

Sorry, dumb question.

Of course, pretending to be poor isn’t the sexiest form of American Faux-Victimhood. Why tell lies about your financial situation when you could capture even wider fame, earn more sympathy, and make more money by fabricating a hate crime? The Hate Crime Hoax rivals fantasy football as our newest and greatest national pastime. The best thing about a Hate Crime Hoax is that it gives us all the opportunity to play along.

Here’s how it works: some desperate con artist invents a story of racism and/or sexism and/or homophobia and/or transgender discrimination out of whole cloth, and distributes the lie on Facebook and Twitter. Within minutes, national media outlets, with their rigorous ethical standards, take the questionable tale of prejudice and, without verifying anything, or following up with anybody, or questioning anything about any part of the clearly contrived narrative, they report the lie as fact. Immediately, the Mindless Mob carries the lie all the way to the viral promised land.

Then, inevitably, a few days later the truth comes out. The lie was a lie. The lie always sounded like a lie, and smelled like a lie, and looked like a lie, and that’s all because it was, in fact, a lie. But the truth never goes viral, so the lie metastasizes in the public conscience, and we all go about our days further convinced that we live in a country where gays, blacks and women simply can’t catch a break.

I’m not sure why, but over the last few weeks the Fake Hate Crime Fraudsters have stepped their game up considerably. Maybe it’s colder, people are spending more time indoors, so they’re getting bored. Hmmm, what should I do today? I could work on this jigsaw puzzle. Or I could go on Facebook and tell everyone that I’m being persecuted for my sexual orientation. Oh, I know! I’ll do the fake hate crime thing and THEN I’ll finish the puzzle!

Whatever the reason, here’s the rundown:

-A mixed race 8th grader in Massachusetts was upset to find racial slurs spray painted onto the side of his house. His mother tearfully spoke in front of cameras about the horrible hate crime. The community rallied around them and vowed to find the racist hatemongers who would dare do such a thing. Eventually, the police located the perpetrator. She lived nearby. Actually, she lived inside the house. She was the mother.

-You probably heard the story about the lesbian waitress in New Jersey who found an offensive note that a hateful Christian customer had written on a receipt. They couldn’t leave a tip because they disapprove of her “lifestyle,” the note read. She uploaded the image to social media, and the story went viral. There was just one problem: she made thewhole thing up. Not only that, she also lied about her military service.

I’m no detective, but I knew her story was bogus from the get-go. How did I figure it out? Because I’m not a fool, and I can recognize horse manure when I see it spewing out of the mouth of a pathological liar. Besides, how in the hell would the customers know about her “sexual orientation” in the first place? Does she regularly work that into conversations with restaurant goers? Hello, I’m Dayna, I’ll be your waitress this evening. I’m a lesbian. What would you like to drink?

Attention internet: it’s called “critical thinking.” Try it some time.

-Vassar college has a thing called the Biased Incident Response Team. Side note: if you send your kid to a school with something called a Biased Incident Response Team, you obviously aren’t interested in making sure he gets a real education. But who am I to judge? The BIRT has been especially busy this year. Biased messages have been showing up all over campus. Horrible things like: “Avoid Being B*tches,” “F**k N*ggers,” and “Hey Tranny. Know Your Place.”

And guess who was found to be responsible for these acts of bias? That’s right: a member of the Biased Incident Response Team. The college reported that the BIRT had discovered the perpetrator, forgetting to mention that the BIRT was the perpetrator. Talk about finding the silver lining: yeah, a member of the Biased Incident Response Team is responsible for the Biased Incidents, but at least they’re the ones who found out that they’re responsible!

The transsexual Biased Incident Avenger/Biased Incident perpetrator has fled from the college in disgrace. Hopefully, the BIRT will be disbanded, which will leave them more time to write nasty messages to themselves.

Who could have predicted such lunacy on the campus of the college that employs a ragtag gang of Hate Crime Ghostbusters?

-Some more racist graffiti showed up on the side of a home owned by a black Baptist minister in Virginia. Do I even have to tell you about the next part?

I’m not sure if these incidents can rival some of Fake Hate Crime Inc’s greatest hits, like the gay college student who beat himself up, branded his own wrist, then reported it as ahate crime. Or the lesbian couple in Colorado that spray painted “Kill the Gay” on their own garage door.

Those are two of my all time favorites, but you can check out an abridged, incomplete listof recent Fake Hate Crimes and pick out your own.

I’m thinking we can invite this one to the party: a Red Lobster employee claims that a customer wrote the phrase “None N*gger” on the tip line of their receipt. In the following weeks, two separate forensics handwriting analysts have concluded that whoever wrote the word “N*gger” is not the same person who wrote “None.”

Did the young lady write it herself to get attention? There’s no reason to think such a thing. No reason, other than the fact that, yeah, that’s probably what happened.

I bring this all to your attention for three reasons: 1) These scam artists need to be publicly shamed. I don’t want to hear about how they must be “troubled,” or they are trying to “call attention to a real problem.” I don’t want to hear excuses for them. They want attention. They want money. They tell lies. They’re liars. No further analysis required.

2) If you posted the initial reports about any of these stories, you have a responsibility to post the follow up. You spread a lie, albeit inadvertently, and now you must spread the truth. It’s called integrity.

3) The neo-liberal social agenda is fueled by myths and fabrications like these. New policies, regulations and laws will often be passed on the heels of such stories, and the policies, regulation and laws don’t go away just because the stories are proven false. If we are going to beat these Orwellian ogres, we need to be diligent in defeating their lies.

People who fake hate crimes ought to be charged with hate crimes. They have literally committed a crime with the sole intention of spreading hatred. They are the worst sort of hatemongers. They are calculated, manipulative and exploitative. They peddle hatred for the sake of hatred; they try to reopen wounds and inflame old hostilities. If you can be charged with a federal crime for leaving a racist note on someone’s doorstep, they ought to be charged with a federal crime for pretending that you left a racist note on their doorstep.

Hateful bigots do exist in this nation. These people are proof of that.

Question Evolution Day

TheReligionofPeace.com

Contributors

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.Francis Maitland Balfour

The ultimate determinate in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve; the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideas to which we are dedicated — Ronald Reagan

What is the network dealio?

Professional contact information

Please email radarbinder@comcast.net to contact me professionally. I consult and sell software, hardware and services to companies, organizations and government entities throughout North America.

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.Francis Maitland Balfour